#17: Baking, Nostalgia and the Magic of Family Traditions with Waltraud Unger

Do you remember baking cookies with your grandma, the smell of fresh dough wafting through the air, and the warmth of the kitchen wrapping you in a comforting hug? Our guest, Waltraud Unger brings those memories to vivid life in our latest episode. A certified nutrition health coach, Waltraud merges her scientific background with business development and health expertise to guide people in discovering their individual needs and alleviating their struggles. Join us as she shares her journey from perfectionism to trust in intuition, the delights of baking, and her love for nature.

The next time you pick up that rolling pin and flour, remember that baking is not just about the end product; it's about the journey. Waltraud teaches us how to make it a mindful and creative process, drawing parallels between setting up your environment for writing and baking. You'll appreciate the value of homemade food and the beautiful act of creativity that baking represents. This is not just about creating delicious treats; it's about the stories that are kneaded into the dough.

But the magic doesn't stop there. Waltraud shares a heartwarming story about foraging for wild blueberries with her grandmother. It's a poignant reminder of how food and nature foster deep connections—and how important it is to preserve these family stories and recipes for future generations. We wrap up this episode with tips on organizing recipes as stories and where to find more of Waltraud's valuable insights. So, join us for this feast for the mind and soul, where the aroma of pastries is more than just mouthwatering—it's the smell of memories, tradition, and love.

You can find Waltraud at www.waltraudunger.com

This group is for people who are in the process of writing their own personal stories to preserve their past for their future. It’s a place to come for story writing inspiration, weekly writing-related events and memes, and continued support from me and the other members.

Join like-minded people and get your stories down on paper for your future generations!

Transcript

Melissa: 0:01

Welcome to the Preserve your Past podcast, where we'll explore all things related to the creative process of writing your stories for future generations. I'm your host, Melissa Ann Kitchen, author, teacher, speaker and coach. I believe that your personal history is a priceless gift for family, friends and generations to come, whether you consider yourself a writer or not. We are discussing the topics that help with every step of the process, like how to mine for the juiciest story ideas or how to refine them into polished final drafts you'll be proud to share. Let's face it sure, your stories can be overwhelming, but I've got you covered. We all have a lifetime of memories to share, so why not save yours to pass along? Let me help you leave your lasting legacy. Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Preserve your Past podcast. I am so excited to share with you our special guest today.

Melissa: 1:12

Waltraud Unger, now Waldrad, is a certified nutrition health coach, a wife, a mother of three, as well as a business leader. Recovering perfectionist one of probably many of our mutual traits a former research physicist who fell in love with the real science and the art of trusting one's intuition. Now she turned these interests into something beautiful. Through her platforms, her coaching sessions and workshops, she shares insights from her own experience and education to give people many times entrepreneurs, business leaders, but many women and men the courage and wisdom to tune into their bodies, hearts and minds so they can follow what serves their highest good and grow their business ventures and their life ventures. Her mission is to bring science and intuition together in a way that allows people to discover their bio individual needs so they can uncover the root cause of their struggles and alleviate them for good. She believes that when we live in harmony with nature, insustainable and mutually beneficial ways, we heal ourselves body, mind and soul. Her clients learn to create healthy and time tested habits, to leave behind excess weight, chronic illness, anxiety, overwhelm, in order to build a solid foundation for a healthy and joy filled life. Waltraud combines her scientific mind and her know how and business development with her insight on health to be a catalyst for profound shifts. Health is the foundation for anything we want in life. She says, and I quote it's your birthright to live a healthy life through a personal growth, meaningful connections and joy. And when you are healthy, focused and present, you can live life with purpose, ease and flow. She is a passionate baker, loves spending time in nature and especially on the coast of Maine, which is another one of our spirit connection, and she shares her love with others through her gluten free cooking and baking.

Melissa: 3:37

Welcome, Waltraud, thank you so much. Yeah, I'm so glad you joined. So I gave that information. But I want to give a little bit of more information to people to understand why, what that connection was, aside from all those beautiful things that you do, which is a big part. But what connected me and you was first our love of entrepreneurship and knowing that we had a bigger message that we wanted to share with the world, and then learning how to do that in a way that felt really comfortable, which no matter what.

Melissa: 4:12

We're talking about those of you who are my listeners. You're talking about getting your stories down. It needs to be in a way that feels right and authentic to you, without overwhelm and without too much pressure. But I have participated one firsthand with Walter's classes also and love the way that you integrate the mindfulness into the baking and, as we were talking also, you integrated your personal stories of baking as a child into your workshops, into your being. Can you tell me a little bit, tell our listener also our listeners about that and what that means to you and a little more. Can you speak to that?

Waltraud: 5:00

Absolutely, and thank you again so much for having me on this podcast. I feel really, really honored to be here and, yes, it all revolves around stories, in a way sharing what we know in a way that we can all connect and take away the essence for ourselves and integrate it. And for me, yeah, when you grow up as a woman in a man's world, like I did in my former life as a research physicist, there are so many things that are expected and you take on a persona to survive and it leads to overwhelm, it leads to losing who you are. And when I made the decision as a mom at that time of two I had a two year old and a newborn and I was promoted to cover more clients around the world that would have put me from 50% travel to 75% travel I had to step away and it was really, really hard to let go of this expected persona. And when I started to tune into what brings me joy who am I and what gifts do I have besides helping a company meet their bottom line and that's when it all sort of opened up and it's allowing ourselves to be who you really are. And it comes in a form of a story yes, the stories of your ancestors, of your family, but also your own personal story and what you tell yourself.

Waltraud: 6:42

And it was so interesting when I then set out on this path to share what's really important to me, and one of the things is food. I grew up in a family where you know, food and lifestyle and close to nature was so normal. But it was a part of me that I never shared in my former life because here I had to compete, we had to be on our toes. All of a sudden we had to perform, because it didn't matter what you did yesterday, it's only what's the next. So through diving into that true story of what I think is me, it allowed me to then share authentically some of the past as well and what would form me, which I had forgotten in that earlier setting of me. So it's very interwoven with who we are, I think, and the stories we share and that we tell ourselves or not. You know what I mean.

Melissa: 7:40

Yeah, no, I love that and it's beautiful and it's true the reason why there's so many reasons why I mean I share my why of losing my parents at a young age, as when I started really looking into my stories. But that's not the only reason we would look into who we are and our own story as well as who we are that we've gone through generationally of what's important to us from that familial way also. So that's really that's beautiful. I know you share a lot also of stories of that and how that led you to certain recipes that you share with everyone in that. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those recipes and how those tie into your childhood and your experiences?

Waltraud: 10:22

Absolutely yes. So when I was growing up, I grew up in Germany and you may all be able to hear that from my accent, which is okay. Life is very different than living here in the US and I remember very fondly baking with my grandmother or even cooking. So both of my parents worked and it was expected to have dinner on the table at five o'clock sharp and when you were a kid you just sort of be out there and play. So my grandmother was sort of my confidant and always had my back and she would come and help me while I may have run a few minutes late coming home from playing, and so we cook together and she loved to bake. I still remember making apple strudel with her, which is very, very different from the apple strudel that you get here. It's more of a noodle dough almost. It's very, very thin, it's not a phyllo dough and it's still one of my favorite recipes.

Waltraud: 11:25

So when I came to the US, a lot of the foods that were familiar to me did not exist. So I brought those recipes with me and I found out later on that it's not just on my father's side where we had all the bakers. I mean, I mentioned my grandmother. But my father's sister was an incredible home baker. She could have had a bakery. Hands down her torts and her cakes were amazing and you would never go to her house and they weren't at least three cakes, I mean, it didn't matter what day of the week it was. So I knew that part.

Waltraud: 11:59

But on a recent trip back I learned from my mother that her mother and grandmother and so on they were bread bakers and she actually gifted me on the last trip the bread basket that my grandmother on my mother's side used and what's so beautiful about this is on my mother's side she grew up on a farm and this bread basket is made from the straw of their fields and it's much larger than what I use. So I'm not currently using it for baking, but she used that routinely and what they did was what she did. She would bake bread once a month. They would fire up the town hall it was a wood fired oven and she would make four or five of those loaves of sourdough bread real sourdough bread with wheat and rye, and she would bake that for the week. And then they had ways to store it.

Waltraud: 12:54

They were telling me that they used to bury it really deep into the wheat kernels because that sounds gross. But hey, the mice couldn't get to it and it would stay fresh. So even if the loaf of bread was three weeks old, it still tastes good and I remember her going down and grabbing one of the big loaves and cutting that and it was just so amazing Because, as a child, a big loaf looks a lot bigger. So it was really special that my mom gifted me this basket. So, and then my parents' generation. They weren't any bread bakers, but when I came here to the US I misbred a lot and then in 2010, 2011, I found out that I couldn't have gluten anymore. So here goes the books of family recipes from my father's side and my mother's side, and they all have wheat in it.

Waltraud: 13:53

And I had to start converting them because that's my comfort food.

Waltraud: 13:58

That is what connects me to all these women that came before me and I feel like this is something that I can share with people, especially now where gluten intolerance is on the rise, where our gut health is compromised and when you, for example, you sourdough to bake, you predigest the grain, so it helps you assimilate the nutrients, it helps you to digest it better, it helps us heal that gut. Those are stories that I keep hearing from some of my students that they feel like the bread that they are now making and eating. It feels like a saff to their intestinal system and it's like it's all this wisdom that I have from those really strong women that came before me that I am. Now I found myself in the situation of teaching to pass that on, not just to my children that's what I originally did. I wanted them to know where I come from, where our family comes from but now also to other people that struggle and that I find out not have that connection. So, yeah, that brought me to this whole side of teaching how to bake.

Melissa: 15:11

I love it and I loved being part of that because I think another piece of the community of before, compared to now, was that you did things more in a sense of community. Right In our parents and our grandparents, especially your grandmother's age, it would have been through like women were able to do things more in community with each other. And so when I took one of your baking classes it was actually a cake we did a chocolate, oh, a bunk cake. I did one of the chocolate bunk cakes the dark chocolate, red one and it was really good and it was so much fun even though it was virtual to do that with all of us together on the video online. But however, it is even virtually afterwards to share and see everyone's.

Melissa: 16:02

But it was really lovely to have your guidance and your knowledge, because I am someone who, while I know my family recipes and make those pies that I learned, I also feel really intimidated by cooking and baking sometimes, or it feels not enjoyable.

Melissa: 16:21

But I think I learned from that also was the experience of creating the experience, to be not just about getting it done but enjoying the experience, which also leads to that feeling of the same thing we do in our stories, of creating the experience, the way we would create our stories by thinking about our senses, by thinking about little things. The same way, I talk about setting up our writing environments to be successful. That's what I try to do now when I will sit down and do my baking, and I learned that from you also. We did some special mindfulness strategies while we were doing it and getting ready for that and preparing for it. I realize now that I did a lot of the same things. It's like, ok, a nice, clean kitchen, keep your desk ready to do your writing, music or something to create an atmosphere that you want to be in, and I feel like there's a very parallel between sitting down to do your writing and creating that way, as there is when you're getting ready to do your baking or your cooking.

Waltraud: 17:30

So yeah, absolutely, and I still do that. I develop all of my recipes myself if they are not direct translations from the family recipes, which is really hard to do, to have a direct translation when you go from a regular gluten recipe to now make it gluten free. And I'm finding my best way to do that is to really be in the zone and connect with what you want to create. The first thing I do is I'm barefoot. I want to connect with the ground beneath me. I want to connect with Mother Earth. It grounds me, it keeps me in my zone. I also have meditation music on. I have some favorite ones that I always play and just having my island, which I almost call it's my altar, my baking altar. I need to have that clean, I have to have it set out, and when I teach a class, I can sense that for so many people it's very overwhelming and we are so programmed to just follow the steps and get it done and have it perfect. But when you, for example, go into sourdough baking, you have to know your starter, you have to know your dough. It forms like a connection between what you're creating and you have to understand that. So it is a given take. It's science but, yes, it's art. If you want to do something really good, it's practice and you need to get to know it. So I like to start my classes with an exercise or a meditation to really take that anxiety off that a lot of people feel, but also to give us permission to understand that what we are doing is sacred, like, especially with sourdough baking.

Waltraud: 19:16

We have evidence that sourdough baking existed 5,500 years ago. That was before there was baker's yeast and, you know, baking powder and baking soda. This is the ancient way of doing that. Now think about the generations of mostly women that have practiced this art, and it truly is an art, and I want us to understand what we are doing is sacred. We are taking individual ingredients, we are bringing it together. It's like alchemy. We are forming something completely different. We can infuse it with our love, which many of us do when we really get into it and get hooked that we are sharing with our loved ones. So there is a certain magic around it. And the other thing that you know, for me always comes out two things when you're in the corporate world, all the feminine traits, like cooking and baking, went, you know all that Respected, yeah, respected.

Waltraud: 20:18

So I kept a lot of this hidden. And then, when I became a health coach well, baking, specifically, and health coaching doesn't necessarily go together either so I didn't openly admit that this was something that I love to do, but you can do it in a really healthy way. That's good for your body, and I think we often, as women nowadays, feel like it's not cool. It's more cool for the guys to start cooking and baking, but for us, it's still this, this role, this gender role but, there is something so nourishing and so sacred about it and I always think of it this way, especially when I bake bread.

Waltraud: 20:58

I can go to the supermarket. I can buy a loaf of gluten free bread. That's a expensive be. It has lousy ingredients. It doesn't really do me any good. Maybe I get cut off on the way to the supermarket. I'm all grumpy. I can take the same time and create something here and nourish my nervous system at the same time and be creative and express myself.

Waltraud: 21:24

And this was an aha that I had when my father-in-law had passed away. And I remember the day after I was alone in the house and I needed to process all these information and I didn't. Emotions, not information, emotions. I didn't know how to do that. It was this whole spectrum.

Waltraud: 21:45

And I remember that I started to bake. I opened the pantry and I had in there dark chocolate, and I love that. You make that cake with dark chocolate nuts and I hadn't made that since I was a teenager. But it just, like inner trans, started to chop the chocolate, chop my nuts, get it already. And when this was all done, it all made sense and I could process emotions. Now everybody around me when they came home is like you had to bake today of all days. But it was that moment when I realized that what I've been hiding from myself and from others helped me be me, process, calm myself, be creative, allow myself to go through the ups and downs of life. And I felt, if that happens to me, I'm not the only one. I'm not that unique. There are others that go through the same, that find that relaxing. Why not talk about it? And that's when it all started, where people started to come and say, yeah, I want to do that, I want to learn that. Yes, I like to do that, but I don't know how.

Waltraud: 22:54

So it is those stories of our lives, when we allow them to be what they are and share it with others. That's when magic happens, when we connect, when we find community, especially as women, to do the things that help us.

Melissa: 23:11

So you said several amazing things.

Melissa: 23:14

The first off is our challenge, I think, as women, to connect to our past without feeling it's a step backwards.

Melissa: 23:28

The roles that women played, many of the actions of how they did it, were their mindfulness techniques that are also supportive of our families and supportive of ourselves, and so baking is one other way that they did that, and I think that comes back to us as a culture trying to simplify solutions and saying I need time for myself, I need mindfulness, and thinking that it's going to be a course or it's going to be just yoga, and some people don't resonate with yoga, or it's just going to be a workout or a run and don't resonate with that.

Melissa: 24:16

So what I challenge listeners to think about is looking for different ways that that works for them, and baking parallels the positive benefits you get from doing things like yoga and as a person who practices it, I can see so much of that and you talking about being barefoot and grounded and then going through the chopping and going through the steps of preparing it and with the energy of creating. But I think there is still a challenge in us as women in traditional roles or breaking out into careers that are non-traditional careers that we're now being able to come back and, balance and choose those feminine, historically feminine societal roles, but not look at them as an either or, but just as the magic that they were.

Waltraud: 25:24

Exactly, I think, when we allow ourselves to be what brings us joy or to do what brings us joy, that's when we can find solutions like baking. And, just like you, I love yoga, I love meditation, I love my walks. I'm not a runner, but I love to swim and there's absolutely parallel and I always look at it this way I can go to yoga, which I love, and it's a great break and it's wonderful for my body and my mind.

Waltraud: 25:53

But that's an hour and then I come back, but I live another 23 hours a day. What can I do more mindfully, more fully present, that allows me similar benefits. And when I had this experience with the red wine cake, that that one day that shifted so much for me was a few days later I started researching. It's like what was it about that experience that allowed me to process emotions, and I found things like chopping, stirring is like rocking, like when a child is upset, they start rocking. So all those repetitive motions help us reset our nervous system and I'm like duh, that's so cool. And so often, like when we prepare a meal, we have to chop or clean or whatever. We don't want to do them because we don't look at them as special, but we can make them special, by the way. We look at it and do it.

Melissa: 26:54

So I would say, to trying that back into listeners who are working on their stories, to look at writing that way and ways that we can bring our groundedness and mindfulness to our writing, because sometimes when we sit down to write, it may not be the thing that's meant to share. It might be us learning ourselves and learning our own story, or it might be the chopping, like your writing session for a day might be getting the gunk out. It might be that, parallel to the chopping the nuts, the chopping the chocolate and getting through, and maybe it is telling a story that is not going to be intended for anyone to share, and so even I've talked about that in past episodes. While it is, you know, my mission is to preserve your past, to be able to share it. It's also about processing our past or our now, and getting to know ourselves and using story as a way to do that. So I love that, because I can think of times when I've sat down and just had to, like, get things out on a page to process it, or write a letter to the person in my past that I didn't get to have the conversation with to process it.

Melissa: 28:09

So I love that baking. We can still think about those actions that help us to process all of our feelings and which is we're learning now is an important piece of growth and of emotional health is we can't avoid, we do not need to safely kind of go through, and I think baking to work through things is beautiful and I love that you found a way to make it, you know, something accessible to you and healthier to you, that it also opens up baking to many people now, like you said, who are having that health issues or things like that. So I love the past and the present and I know piece of that and maybe you can speak to this is also the health of our grains now compared to what it would have been like being closer farm to table, because I've heard some things about even the grains and how we are processing. It is partially because of how refined everything is in our diets compared to how it would have been maybe for your grandmother to be processing Very different grain In those years.

Waltraud: 29:24

it has gone through so much hybridization that the grain is very different. So when you look at the protein in a wheat kernel, it has become so complex now through hybridization that it's very hard to digest. And why is it? We want higher yields and easier yields. So I remember as a kid we happen to live right next to a cornfield and the corn was high. You could hide in it.

Waltraud: 29:50

we would make little mazes in there and play, but now it's barely two, three feet high, because it you know, when wheat ripens and it's that long, like five feet tall, if there's a window of rain it would flop over, and I remember sometimes half the field was flopped over, was just flat, and it's very hard to harvest. So now we have changed it so that the wheat is much lower, but it comes at the expense of our gut. Now we have a protein that's very hard to break down. We certainly didn't use any of the pesticides and fertilizer, it was all natural. I remember watching how they fertilize the field. It was with leftovers from the animals. So it's very different how our grain is and, interestingly enough, I'm not celiac, at least not that I know of, but I'm very sensitive to gluten and gluten intolerant. But when I go to Germany I can eat that wheat because it's different.

Waltraud: 30:59

It is a different form of wheat than it is here. Now can I eat unlimited amounts.

Melissa: 31:05

No.

Waltraud: 31:06

But I could have a roll a day, for example. I could never do that here. I could have maybe a bite, and then I would feel it already. So there is a difference to it.

Melissa: 31:17

Beautiful, beautiful. Okay, Well, that was amazing and that's exactly what I really appreciate you sharing your perspective of how your story helped you to be able to, or how your baking reconnected you with who you are and your own stories right, and then how the stories also impacted how you reach other people through your baking. So, on the podcast. Before we say goodbye today, I am going to be asking you two questions that all the guests are going to be able to answer. My first question is do you have a story from your past that you wish you knew, A story that might have been like a family story of someone that you never got to know or never got to ask before it was impossible to know that story? Is there something that you could share on that?

Waltraud: 32:21

Yeah, a lot of stories, because a lot was not talked about, especially the more challenging ones. It's generation where, if you don't talk about, it doesn't exist. I spent so much time with my father's mother so I know her life very well and the life of you know that side of the family. She was very open and shared a lot. But I don't know a lot about my mother's side. They were definitely more reserved. We lived further away.

Waltraud: 32:53

I didn't have that close of a relationship and while I remember the breads that she had when we visited, I only recently found out about the basket and the townhawk and how she did it and it made me curious to understand more how life was for her. She did what she had to do but she would never speak much about it. So her whole life is kind of a mystery. I knew she was strong. She had to be strong with being a mom and having the farm and living through the war and all of that. All of these women were extremely strong, but what was it like for her inside having to do that? I?

Melissa: 33:37

love that I wish I could ask yeah and to have now more glimpses. It is interesting when you wish you could kind of, as we grow older, and kind of identify more with them, I think that it would be natural for you to even want to know more. The other question is looking at the opposite. So I always tell people when I am working with them or when I'm talking and doing my speaking especially my genealogy people who are really doing research and looking forward and trying to decide how to share their family stories with others that my main statement has always been start with you. So I'd like to know with you, is there a story that you know, you definitely want to preserve and pass along to your children and to future generations?

Waltraud: 34:32

Well, one of them is definitely the family recipes, and I've decided to write a cookbook. Don't know exactly when it's going to come out, but it's a way for my children to know what was normal for me, what I enjoyed, what was my comfort with, what was our food like at that time. Especially, not everybody speaks German and most of my recipes are still in German, so having many of them now translated, it helps to share that and also the connection to nature. Life was very different and to some degree they don't really understand it. They see it when we go and visit, but I want them to know that there's incredible beauty in nature and there is so much that it gives us every day, from healing plans to just beautiful moments of walks and connections and stories.

Waltraud: 35:31

I remember one many times I went in the woods with my grandmother to forage for wild blueberries and often we would go and she would secretly put like a peach in her pocket and while our buckets were half full she said hey, come on over, let's sit down, and we would just sit down on the ground against the tree and she would magically pull out this peach which she knew I loved features. I would just have this little break and those stories I want my kids to know and to find that same beauty, to create those same magical moments. Those are not the big stories of grand adventure, but it's those moments where you just sit down with a loved one and share moments and just talk a little bit about it.

Melissa: 36:16

And I talk about the little stories being the ones that we remember and it is the connection and it's the glimpse into the people to have that time, just that one-on-one time with her that you had there and that little magical atmosphere also, and nature is so special. Thank you so much for joining me. I want you to share with everyone how they can, because I know we have a lot of bakers and a lot of people have been bringing up the importance of family recipes. That's come up a lot in my discussions. I do have some resources that are going to be out on how we can organize recipes as stories, but can you share how people can find you Wiltred and some of the upcoming things that you are going to be sharing with us?

Waltraud: 37:08

The easiest way to find me is through my website, and that's simply waltredongercom. I have the bread recipe there, a simple beginner bread recipe that is very close to the bread that I grew up with. It's going to be gluten-free for anybody that needs to be gluten-free, so you can find that all the upcoming events live in person or virtual, and just other resources and classes and courses that I'm offering to help people really find the joy and the deliciousness of that gluten-free life that I now am living. And I'm finding that so many others now are embarking on to or have embarked and really struggle with some fundamental things like pasta and breads and whatever that all of a sudden seems like we can't have anymore or it doesn't taste good. And, yeah, you can just still make it delicious.

Melissa: 38:05

Beautiful. Thank you so much, and I will be posting the link to Walter's information in our show notes for this episode, and I thank you again, walter, for sharing your story with me and my listeners. It's always a pleasure when we talk. I know we'll be doing this again in the future because there's so much we share in common with that, and thank you again for taking the time to join us today.

Waltraud: 38:32

And thank you so much for having me on. It's always a pleasure to speak to you, to connect, and, yeah, I feel very, very honored to be here and be a guest on your podcast. So thank you, so so very much, thank you.

Melissa: 38:46

Wasn't that a fun episode. I enjoyed our conversation so much and if you would like to continue our conversation, be sure to follow this podcast and share with friends. This helped share the mission of preserving the past with stories. For more tips, tools and inspiration, www. melissaannkitchen. com head over to and, as always, let's get writing your powerful personal stories.